Navigating the Girl Flirting of College Parties

You got her phone number and you’re best friends and you’re gonna hang out but there’s just one problem—you don’t remember her at all.

By Sara Marie Seidel, University of Colorado at Boulder

You know that feeling you get when you pry your eyelids open and peer through what’s left of your shimmery smokey eye?

The one where you’re first relieved in your sleepy state that: A.) You made it to your own bed B.) It doesn’t look like you did much damage to the stuff you pushed off your desk, and C.) You have your phone, wallet, and keys (your dignity is up in the air until at least noon).

After making sure everything that made it out with you the night before also made it back, friends included, you scroll through your phone to find you texted your name to a person you’ve never heard of. “Seriously?” you think to yourself, “who the hell is Eve? I don’t think I know anybody named Meggggf, and I definitely don’t know a Nessa.”

It’s official; you’ve made a bosom buddy, a few actually. You spent the night titillating with surrounding party girls (I promise that’s the last boob pun), collecting the phone numbers of your newfound breast friends (I lied).

Everyone goes to parties to socialize, but who with is the real question. As the guests swarm the keg, turn up their foam mustaches and toss back shots of something that doubles as nail polish remover, their bladders begin to fill and it becomes time for you to meet your first bosom buddy. Bathroom time!

Step one: Go to the bathroom. I promise you this plan is foolproof. I’m 99 percent sure that the only people using the bathroom at a party are girls that are fixing their makeup, doubling as guards because of the dodgy lock, crying about their exes or peeing for the twenty-ninth time.

Chances are, everyone is going to be screaming about something personal in here, whether it’s that they literally can’t even believe Jason’s here, or that they really should’ve pooped before they left the house.

The bathroom is the best place for new friends. You walk out of there not only feeling relieved because the pressure on your bladder has been lifted, but so has your confidence. Your hair is so pretty, and so is your dress, your face too, while we’re at it I’m so obsessed with you. I’m obsessed. I actually can’t even.

With Eve’s number in your phone and your number in hers, you feel more comfortable. Though the only people you really know at this party are your flaky roommates and some friends from high school, it doesn’t even matter because if you lose them it’s okay. Now you have Eve to stand next to, you’re no longer alone.

Shit, now Eve is leaving. After exchanging promises to hangout and be best friends, along with a tight hug, you move on to step two of getting a bosom buddy—replacing that backstabbing Eve. Who does she think she is to desert you?

Step two: Find the source of the liquor. Nothing says “best friend for the night” like intertwining your arms wedding-style and pounding back some shots with a random girl looking to get inebriated.

If you’re at a frat house, there’s usually pledges behind a bar, handing out plastic glow-in-the-dark shot glasses; go there. House parties are trickier because nobody drinks where you’d expect them to: the kitchen. In fact, the kitchen rarely has anything other than a keg and people flinging their legs into the air as the golden suds spill everywhere.

Search the party until you find a girl taking shots that you can join. You both will most likely be laughing loudly at your new inside jokes that only you two get because you’re now best friends.

The shot-pounding bosom buddy, Meggggf, is no different than the bathroom bosom buddy, aside from the fact that her name is a little messed up because autocorrect can only do so much for you at this point.

You compliment her on her makeup and she reciprocates by admiring your dress, though you already know it’s cute because all your bathroom friends told you.

The key to getting a bosom bud is praising your new friend’s features. I’m serious when I say you need to keep it superficial. Nobody cares if you’re impressed with their GPA or major, that’s what parents are for. Besides, everyone has a GPA and major, but not everyone has super great makeup like Meggggf.

Unfortunately, you weren’t Megggf’s first bosom bud of the night, meaning her BAC is probably higher than yours, so she’s chosen to leave the party, leaving you stranded. Dammit, Meggggf, I thought you were the one. Step three here we come.

By this point the party is starting to die down. The bathroom isn’t full of boisterous girls, flashes of red lipstick and loud confessions. Instead there’s probably a girl crying (dammit, tequila).

The handles of liquor lie abandoned and you shudder thinking of taking another fluorescent shot. The only other place to find your last bosom friend is on the porch.

It’s likely crowded because drinking and social chain smoking are a package deal. Maybe you smoke, maybe you don’t, but regardless you’re taking Vanessa’s cigarette and telling her how awesome her skirt is. She adds her own number in your phone for the sake of giving autocorrect a break, and calls herself “Nessa.”

You two are on a nickname basis by now, because c’mon you’ve known each other for ages. Before you know it, the acrid smoke clears between you two and the cigarette is being smashed into the porch. Just like that your friendship has been extinguished.

You make it home unscathed and curl up in bed, excited to text your new friends tomorrow. Unfortunately, your morning is spent in bed drinking Pediasure and trying to forget about all the people you met last night.

Then it hits you, you’re also an Eve, a Meggggf, and a Nessa. You exist in other girls’ phones, and you’re deleted the morning after when they scroll through their drunken texts as well. Though this eases your sense of shame, it does nothing for your throbbing headache.